Mad As Hell Docs In Town – September 22, 2010

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Philip Kauffman

MAHD Tour Coordinator

ARCATA – Is the fight for health care reform over? Not one bit! This fall the Mad As Hell Doctors (MAHD) will follow up on their landmark 2009 National Tour across the United States with a similar tour through California. MAHD is a group of activist physicians and nurses, patient advocates and other health care providers who are fighting for a Single National Health Insurance Program for all Americans. MAHD will take part in 26 rallies and town halls from Arcata on Sept. 23 to the capitol in Sacramento on Oct. 12.

There will be two MAHD events in Arcata on Thursday, Sept. 23. First will be a noon rally on the HSU Quad next to the bookstore. The second event will be Thursday evening at the Bayside Grange at 2297 Jacoby Creek Rd. off Old Arcata Rd, Bayside.

This free event will feature good fun, lively discussion and educational entertainment including a panel discussion with local health providers Dr. Hal Grotke, Dr. Ann Lindsay and Dr. Ellen Mahoney. There will be a community dinner at 5:30 offering locally produced organic soups and salad, beer, wine, and desserts. The MAHD performance will begin at 7 p.m. A donation of $5 to $10 for the dinner is requested.

MAHD advocates for a national Single Payer, Improved Medicare-for-all health care system, where everyone is covered, co-pays and deductibles eliminated, and health care decisions are left to patients and their doctors, not Wall Street profiteers. The recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act does little to provide these elements and instead entrenches the current medical-corporate complex, which is the cause of our health care system’s chaos and unsustainable cost spiral.

“Many people say this legislation was a step in the right direction,” says Dr. Paul Hochfeld, Mad As Hell Doctor and producer/director of Health, Money, and Fear. “It is more like we have started looking in the right direction with better community health funding and preventive care, but we are unable to take a substantial step in that right direction because we are tethered and distracted by profit motives and fragmentation.”

MAHD has reached out to local California groups and created a network of coordinators linking together organizations that are advocating on the local level for true, comprehensive health care reform. With the recent actions of the California Assembly to shelve and kill SB 810, California’s Universal Healthcare Act, MAHD is more committed than ever to show the links between our broken political system, the Medical Industrial Complex’s desire for profits over patient care, and our leaders’ failure to enact historic healthcare legislation in the form of Single Payer, Improved and Expanded Medicare for All.

The Mad As Hell Doctors provide a fun, engaging, educating experience through their events. With a social network on Facebook of over 11,000 (facebook.com/MadDrs) and a dynamic web site at madashelldoctors.com, the group plans to once again document their journey with daily blog updates, videos, photos and media from the road.

In the fall of 2009 the Mad As Hell Doctors traveled 6,000 road miles through America’s heartlands from Portland, Ore. to Washington D.C. in three weeks, stopping at over 40 venues in 22 states during the trip. After appearances on Ed Schultz (MSNBC), Keith Olbermann (MSNBC), Democracy Now, and interviews on dozens of other major media outlets, the group now continues to use their unique approach and activist flair to advocate for Single Payer, Improved Medicare-for-all.

The day of events in Arcata and Bayside are being presented by Humboldt Health Care for All, the local non-profit branch of California Health Care for All. Event sponsors include the American Association of University Women, the Emma Center, Humboldt Unitarian Fellowship, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Vets for Peace 56 and Physicians for a National Health Program.

Meet this outspoken group of physicians from California and Oregon who advocate for increased access to equitable healthcare for all Californians. HumboldtHCA@gmail.com, MadAsHellDoctors.com